


Interficiam Exilii

by Casylum



Category: Star Trek
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 06:16:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Casylum/pseuds/Casylum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the black of space, air is everything. </p>
<p>(Firefly AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interficiam Exilii

 

**{stardate: 2562.271}**

 

When it comes down to it, Jim can’t remember how he ended up on the floor.

 

It’s quiet too, with nothing disturbing the silence except the increasingly loud rattle of what he supposes currently passes for his breathing. He doesn’t know why that’s happening either--his head aches too much to handle anything beyond ‘ow’ in terms of conscious thought, and his lungs are burning in a way he knows means he’s fucked. It’s not a new position, this supreme collapse of anything resembling a good situation, but he’s very rarely found himself in such a complete bind that he can’t finagle his way out of it. But today, he’s a day late and about fifty seemingly impossible feet too short.

 

That comes through in a starburst that leaves spots dancing in front of his eyes, bright pinpricks of light that swirl up and out from the gray that’s fuzzing the edge of his field of vision. He needs to go somewhere, somewhere that’s damned close, yet hellishly far away because he can’t fucking move, not without his head throbbing to beat the band, and his lungs trying to pant and getting nothing but the agonizing feeling of constriction.

 

There’s something in his left hand, and it’s digging into his skin. Jim’s pretty sure it’s already cut him at least once, because his fingertips are slick with something a little too thick to be sweat. He blinks a few times, eyelids scraping down over eyes that are somehow both too wet and too dry at once, trying to focus up and to his left. When his hand and its regrettably sharp passenger waver into something recognizable, he realizes that it’s an engine part, one of Scotty’s extras that he keeps in his quarters as decoration.

 

Engine. That’s why it’s so quiet: the ever present hum of the ship’s engine is missing, as is the low counter-rumble of life support. That discovery (not a discovery, a remembrance) brings something forward, beyond the underlying line of ‘oh shit’ that’s replaced ‘ow’ in his skull. Got to-- _fire, flash, smoke, god so much smoke_ \--fix the engine, running-- _screaming, Uhura’s screaming, boots clatter against near rusted out wire mesh_ \--out of air.

 

_What’s air, anyway?_ Jim thinks, wheezing slightly in all that he can muster for a laugh. _Up here in the vacuum, it ain’t nothing but an illusion._

 

**{stardate: 2557.35}**

 

“Are you sure she’ll hold up?” Jim kicks the edge of the cargo bay and dispassionately watches a fine spray of rust fly out from the toe of his boot.

 

“Of course I’m sure,” the shipyard owner says, looking offended that anyone desperate enough to crawl into this scrapheap with a serious intention of buying something would think that any of his products were any less than top of the very shitty line. “She’s good for flight, everything from atmosphere to deep space.”

 

“Uh huh,” Jim says, squinting as he looks around. The upper beams are shot through with what looks like phaser blasts, and there’s a starburst pattern on the vacuum seal leading back to the crew quarters. If this thing didn’t explode when some future idiot took it up, he’d eat one of Uhura’s boots.

 

“But really, she’s a real beauty,” the owner continues, but Jim’s not paying attention. He’s actually trying to leave, to scoot by the overeager man and find wherever Uhura got to in this lumbering pile of vaguely mobile metal, when he sees it. Up on a small rise that he’s sure isn’t actually there, just a product of his imagination, is a ship that actually looks relatively put together. Strong lines, no visible rust, and from what he can make out, maybe an attached shuttle craft to boot.

 

He comes back in to the owner’s babble, focused now that he does actually intend to _buy_ something, instead of leave town on the first vessel that will take a man still wearing Federation gold.

 

“--Treat her proper, and she’ll be with you for the rest of your life,” the owner finishes, breathing hard as he stands on the line dividing the shade of the cargo bay and the direct sun of the outside. Jim’s silent for another few moments, calculating the probable cost, what he’s got, what he can probably wheedle the price down to, and what he’s going to have to say to Uhura to explain himself.

 

“You listening kid?” The owner says, squinting and leaning further in, away from the sun.

 

“Yeah,” Jim smiles, “treat her right. I intend to.”

 

**{stardate: 2562.271}**

 

He’s made it another ten feet, he thinks, the metal of the part still clutched in his hands striking up sparks as it drags on the ground. He thinks that’s a good sign, remembers Scotty saying that fire needs oxygen to ignite, and that’s why all theirs went to shit so fast. He’s remembering more now, waking up from whatever put him on the ground in the first place. Feels like the aftermath of one of Spock’s nerve pinches, but he knows that’s not it. Fuzzy heads are congruent, but there’s generally not a lot of blood when the Vulcan decides to get violently non-violent, and he can feel it flaking across his forehead.

 

Two more feet, and he’s got flashes of jackboots against the floor of the cargo bay, and lean men in Imperial blue and green. Jim’s lip curls in automatic disgust, compounded only by the fact that he’s pretty sure the Romulans are the reason he’s doing the slowest suicide mission in the history of known space, instead of dying quick or toasting another trip to hell narrowly avoided with the rest of his crew.

 

A crew he still can’t remember the location of. It’s not like they’re chess pieces either, put aside in a bag in a single place to be pulled out whenever necessary. He’s pretty sure they’re in the same place, almost convinced that he’d insisted upon it, but his brain isn’t letting him think that far behind him. He’s got fire, and smoke, and screams, and bloody Romulans on his damn ship, but nothing in between, nothing to explain where his crew is or why the fuck he’s still doggedly pulling himself towards the Enterprise’s main turbine, besides the fact that he assumes that the part in his hand will get the air back on, and really, that’s all he needs. A little air, and Jim Kirk can save the goddamn universe, or what little of it he cares about.

 

Again.

 

**{stardate: 2557.52}**

 

It’s been nearly three weeks, and they’re still not airborn. Or space born. Or whatever the fuck it is that keeps them up in the black, beyond the general lack of gravity excluding the limited spheres around planets.

 

Jim can practically hear Uhura smirking at him from where she’s standing in one of the upper catwalks, as unimpressed now as she’d been when she’d first seen the ship he’d bought.

 

“You paid money for this?” She’d asked, stepping into the wide open space that passed for a cargo hold. “On purpose?”

 

“Shut up, she’s a good ship,” he’d said, adopting a feigned expression of hurt. “And she’s got at least ten percent less rust than anything else in this scrap heap.”

 

“Which is still more rust than I want to think about on reentry,” Uhura had pointed out, stepping over a coil of rope that had been left behind by a previous owner. Why anyone needed rope in space was beyond him, but he didn’t question freebies. “What about a crew? You and I can’t fly her.”

 

Jim had rocked back on his heels and shoved his hands into his pants pockets, resisting the urge to pull his hands behind his back in the traditional parade rest. “About that,” he’d started, a smile breaking across his face as Uhura turned to glare at him in preparation for disapproval. “I put an ad out. In the locals.”

 

Nearly three weeks later, and here they still were, with Jim doing interviews two, three times a day, and Uhura practicing different variations of ‘no way in hell’ that sounded at least vaguely polite. The man he had in front of him now wasn’t even here for a job, just the engine. One of the pilots had offered to give a test drive about a week and a half ago, and Jim’s new purchase had gotten about ten feet in the air before rattling something fierce and slamming back to earth. This guy was a friend of the yard owners, here because of a combination of a gambling debt and the fact that now he’d sold it, the owner wanted Jim and his increasingly useless craft off his property.

 

“So, uh--,” Jim says, looking a bit confusedly at a man who seemed like he’d be more at home in a very dark corner of a bar.

 

“Scott,” the man says in a voice thick with some sort of accent, holding out a hand, “Montgomery Scott. Though no one calls me Montgomery, aside from my dearly departed mother. Scotty’ll do, in a pinch.”

 

“Scotty,” Jim repeats, shaking the proffered hand. “And you’re a mechanic?”

 

“Prefer engineer, if you will,” Scotty says, scratching at his head. “Less of a fix-it-when-it-breaks sort of guy and more of a make-it-so-it-doesn’t-break-again.”

 

“I see,” Jim says. “Well, you’ve had a chance to look at it, do you know what’s wrong? The other guy said something about the anti-grav being fucked, but he couldn’t figure out how to fix it.”

 

Scotty snorts, and mutters something deprecating and incomprehensible under his breath. “It’s a bad coupling, is all. Nothing that dire.”

 

“Really?” Jim says, and he can hear Uhura walking over to stand directly above him. “You sure about that?”

 

“Are you deaf man?” Scotty asks, head tilting to catch sight of Uhura overhead. “Can’t you hear her running? Sweet as a dream she is, apart from that one shoddy bit of work.”

 

“Are you looking for a job, Mr. Scott?” Uhura asks, and Jim grins. Three weeks in, and Uhura’s the one who finally offers someone a job. There’s irony in there somewhere, and he’s almost tempted to go digging for it.

 

**{stardate: 2562.271}**

 

Another three feet. Maybe.

 

Jim would clap for himself, if he thought he was up to it, but he’s really really not. He can’t remember his original calculations, something around fifty or so, but he’s pretty sure he’s done half of it by now. If nothing else, he knows where he started, because when he looks back there’s a long line of smeared blood on the floor, a line that’s shorter than he feels it should be.

 

He’s avoiding thinking about what he’s going to do when he actually reaches the engine. Standing up, pulling out one part, and sticking another in are actions that he’s not sure he can do, not if the increasing grey fuzz that teases the corners of his vision are any indication. But he’ll keep going, because that’s what idiots do when presented with an untenable situation: refuse to believe the untenable bit.

 

It’s what Bones has told him hundreds of times, in between reaming him out and fixing him up with the steadiest hands this side of the ‘verse, and Jim’s finally decided to take it to heart. Except there’s the creeping fear that this situation _is_ untenable, and that he’s not getting out of this, no matter what his crew thinks, because there’s only so much pig headedness can do for a guy before his body just gives out.

 

**{stardate: 2557.68}**

 

“You what?” Jim says, and his feet hit the deck of the mess with a clang.

 

“Took on a lodger,” Uhura says, calm as can be. “Or at least took on an interview for one. You’re to see ‘em in about half an hour.”

 

“How do we even have lodgers on a spaceship?” Jim asks, pushing himself up to a standing position.

 

“This lug you bought comes with a shuttle, remember?” Uhura rolls her eyes and Jim suppresses a grin at her insistence on calling the ship any derogatory name she could think of. “Surprisingly enough, there are people who want that shuttle. One of them, as I said, is going to be here in--” she checks her watch “--now about twenty-five minutes.”

 

“Do I get any details on this person, or am I going in blind?” he asks, following Uhura as she gets up and takes the plate she’d been eating off of over to the dishwasher.

 

“They’re a licensed companion, from Old Terra,” she says over the whine of the hinges, “and that’s all I’ve got. Try not to be an ass.”

 

~~~

 

“You’re a man.” Twenty or so minutes later, and Jim’s already disobeying Uhura’s request.

 

“Last I checked, yeah,” the man in front of him says, scowling hard enough to break china. “Got a problem with that?”

 

“Nope, no problem,” Jim says, waving his arms in dismissive motions that have the unfortunate side effect of making him look slightly deranged. “So, the shuttle. Nice, ain’t she?”

 

“Smallish,” the man says, his voice dragging a bit on the vowels in a way that vaguely reminds Jim of Scotty, but more comprehensible.

 

“Not like you need much room,” Jim says, then almost punches himself as the man turns around and levels a very flat and very unamused look at him.

 

“What can she do?” he says after a beat, just long enough to make Jim uncomfortable. There’s a twinkle in his eye that says he knows it to.

 

“If we’re in atmosphere, you’re free as a bird, so long as she’s full up,” Jim says, fighting the urge to apologize for being an ass, or something, he’s not sure what anymore. “Will even do space, if you’re desperate and push her.”

 

“God have mercy, I never will be,” the man mutters, and then the twinkle drops from his eyes, and he’s dead serious. “So, ground rules.”

 

Jim grunts in a _go on_ sort of way, and the other man runs with it.

 

“If this shuttle is going to be mine, it’s going to be mine, you understand? The only people who come in here without express invitation are me, myself and I. Add to that the fact that I don’t sleep where I work.”

 

Jim blinks, and the other man elaborates: “No freebies, or any other sort of ‘-bies’ for the crew.”

 

“Right,” Jim says, trying not to drag it and failing only a little. “Anything else?”

 

“You fuck with my business for no reason and I’ll kick your ass.”

 

“You talk like I’ve already said yes.”

 

The other man raises an eyebrow, and Jim grimaces. He has a point, for all that he hasn’t actually said anything. He needs someone-- _something_ \--on this ship to make it less likely to be shot down by anyone with a lasting grudge against Federation holdouts. A companion, a  licensed one, even, gives him that barest minimum of an edge.

 

“Jim Kirk,” he finally offers, holding a hand out, “Captain of the--” he pauses “--well, we just don’t know yet.”

 

“McCoy,” the other man says, shaking Jim’s hand with a firm one of his own. “Leonard McCoy.”

 

**{stardate: 2562.271}**

 

Jim’s pretty sure the air (or what’s left of it) has started to cool down. Either that, or he’s lost enough blood and wits that his internal regulator isn’t working anymore. Both options suck, but they’re all he has left. That, and about fifteen more feet of dulled metal floor to crawl his way across.

 

_I get it now_ , he thinks, mentally saluting Bones as he drags himself another few inches forward. _All that talk about space being disease and danger wrapped up in darkness and silence._ He thinks he’s going to die in silence, his screams muffled by the fact that there’s not enough oxygen to burn. He’d laughed, originally, when he’d found the ship’s passenger locked in his shuttle four days out of flight.

 

He’d only come up there because McCoy hadn’t come to any of the meals, even though Jim knew full well he didn’t have any food on the shuttle. After a minute of banging, the door had slid open, and McCoy had leaned heavily against  the jam, eyes fogged just enough for Jim to know he was drunk off his ass.

 

“Missed you at dinner--,” he’d started, and then swayed slightly as the ship hit the corner of some planet or space station’s gravitational field and was pulled ever so slightly out of line.

 

“I might throw up on you,” McCoy had said, then fallen backwards onto his own (thankfully heavily carpeted) floor, knocking himself out for a few minutes.

 

When he came to, Jim was still there, though admittedly sitting on the other side of the hatch, instead of standing there and looking down at him. “Why the fuck did you want a shuttle if you can’t even handle basic space flight?” he’d asked, and McCoy had pushed himself up and said something pithy about divorces and bones, and eventually McCoy was significantly less drunk and Jim had managed to stick his foot in his mouth enough times to make a foot orchestra, and they were relatively good. They understood each other, or as much could be understood by two men who were hiding as much as they were telling.

 

Now Jim’s on the floor in a ship that’s slowly killing him, and Bones is out in the black, drifting in a ship that won’t do space for very long, because pushing her only works if you’ve got a full tank and premium parts, and he and the Enterprise are sadly lacking in both. It’s enough to push him another five feet or so, the thought that he’d taken someone with the deepest fear of space he’d ever seen up into the black and told him it was glorious, and now, because of him, that person was going to die.

 

**{stardate: 2557.73}**

 

“I don’t like him,” Uhura says, arms folded across her chest. “What’s a Vulcan doing with a beard anyway?”

 

“Goatee,” Jim corrects absently, watching the man under discussion move around at the helm. “And he seems to know what he’s doing.”

 

Uhura snorts. “That guy before Scotty seemed to know what he was doing to, and look how useful he was.”

 

Jim sighs. “We need somebody to fly the damn boat, now that it can actually get airborne, you know that.”

 

“Still don’t like him,” Uhura repeats, narrowing her eyes as the man leans closer to the main instrument panel and starts fiddling.

 

“Not to mention the fact,” Jim continues, exasperated at both Uhura and himself, “that this ship’s systems are so out of date none of the people we’ve interviewed so far can fly her. Except--” he jerks his head in the man’s direction “--Him.”

 

“And whose fault is that?” Uhura asks, shifting her glare over to him. He raises his hands up in a warding off gesture and gives his best innocent look in return. She doesn’t buy it.

 

Their conversation is cut short by the arrival of the prospective pilot. “Captain?”

 

“Yeah?” Jim asks, after leveling a look at Uhura that says _don’t fuck this up_.

 

“I do believe I can fly it.” The Vulcan pauses, then continues, “Additionally, if you give me permission to do so, and I am hired, I feel that I can make her work better than her original specifications.”

 

“You got a name, man?” Uhura asks, rudely in Jim’s opinion, but the Vulcan seems nonplussed.

 

“I have several, but I seeing as most of them would be unpronounceable by you, you may call me Spock,” Spock says, his eyebrow going up slightly in his first outward gesture of anything other than overall calm.

 

“Welcome aboard, Spock,” Jim says, nearly putting out a hand before he half-remembers something about Vulcans and hand sex, and makes the executive decision just to grin instead.

 

**{stardate: 2562.271}**

 

He’s finally got to the engine block.

 

Jim’d celebrate, if he thought that simply making it made any difference, but he’s passed the optimistic stage and has dived straight into Bones’ favorite form of pessimism. His back is up against the wall of one of the main generators, his feet braced against the floor, knees up. Theoretically, all he needs is one good shove to get himself on his feet, to get the part in his hand to the empty space he’d made hours ago when he’d first figured out what the hell was wrong (or rather, Scotty had described it to him, Jim had understood maybe three words in ten, and simply gone with whatever part looked the most charred).

 

Theory is all well and good, until Jim gives that final shove and suddenly it’s a black wave and multi-colored sparks across what remains of his field of vision. His lungs make an abortive sort of gasp, but they’re filled with nothing but carbon dioxide and the lingering tang of burnt metal.

 

**{stardate: 2558.123}**

 

They’ve been up in the air, or above it, really, for about a year now, with everything falling into an odd sort of rhythm.

 

Jim and Uhura go on dirtside jobs about once a month, and the rest of their time is spent doing the less exciting part of running on such a backwater edge of space: smuggling. McCoy and the rest know what’s going on, and either ignore it with the most aggravated looks of long suffering that Jim’s ever seen, or occasionally join in, when deemed necessary. It’s generally only deemed necessary when dealing with people that Jim’s pissed off in the past, or would take offense to the fact that both he and Uhura still wear Federation colors. In a select few of those times, it’s when things go to such shit that they need the other three to come bail them out.

 

This is one of those times.

 

It’s on Tylvan, a desert planet, and Jim’s got his back up against the _Enterprise_ ’s hull. His hands are up and empty because someone’s seen too many Old Terran Westerns, and Uhura’s about twenty feet ahead of him and to the left, behind a convenient fall of rocks.

 

“I’m sure we can work this out,” he says, because he can’t keep his mouth shut and he prefers his skin not shot full of holes. “We had a deal, remember? Why don’t y’all st--” A bullet goes hard into the ground in front of his boots and his throat closes up.

 

“We want our money,” one of them says, his voice hitting the vowels almost like he’s trying to swallow them, even as he spits out the consonants. Jim isn’t sure if he’s the one who shot at him, though he’s pretty sure it isn’t the one with the sword. They’re all wearing face masks anyway, which incidentally makes this all somehow so much worse, in a sadly hilarious sort of way.

 

“Yeah, all twenty-five thousand of it,” another of them says, the bandana tied over his face twitching as he does so.

 

The one with the sword makes an abortive motion, and exchanges looks with the guy with the garbled vowels. “Twenty-five?” he asks softly, and Jim can see the twitchy man pale slightly underneath the coating of dirt. “You told us eight.”

 

“No, no,” Jim says loudly, “it was definitely twenty-five.”

 

“Now wait just a min--” Twitchy starts, but then stops when a sword suddenly gets very up close and personal with his throat.

 

“That his money we’re trying to steal, or yours?” Garbler asks, his gun pointed thankfully down.

 

“His,” Jim says, relieved but not yet willing to put his hands down. “He paid me about two days ago for a dozen casks of Romulan ale. Guess he doesn’t like the exchange part of capitalism.”

 

“See now,” Sword says, voice easy enough, though his body is wound tighter than piano wire. “He told us that you’d stolen his money, and that all you needed was a little scaring.”

 

“A gross lie,” Jim says, nodding, before he’s interrupting by the hiss of an opening airlock.

 

“Captain?” He hears from above, and goddamn if that isn’t Spock leaning out of the back of McCoy’s shuttle with a railgun aimed solidly at sword guy. “Is there any trouble?”

 

“No, no trouble,” Jim says.

 

“In fact,” Uhura says, finally standing up and revealing herself, her own gun pointed in the direction of the garbler, “the Captain and these nice gentlemen were just reaching an accord, weren’t they?”

 

“Well,” Jim says, dropping his hands finally and shaking them a bit to get the blood back in, “I wouldn’t call it _that_...”

 

“Jim doesn’t use big words,” McCoy says, and Jim tilts his head back to see him next to Spock, an honest to god _pistol_ aimed lazily towards Twitchy. “He prefers the simple stuff, like ‘move and you’re dead’.” He smiles widely, and suddenly Jim’s very glad he’s never gotten drunk enough to push the limit of McCoy’s no fraternization rule.

 

Jim leaves his own gun in its holster, and just looks at the tableau--how’s that for a big word--in front of him. “You boys looking for work?” he finally says, a grin creeping across his face at the eyeball roll he swears he can see Uhura give him from across the distance.

 

“I--” Twitchy starts, and Sword’s hand jerks just a little. He shuts up.

 

“We could be,” Garbler says. “What’re you offering?”

 

“Ten, same as the rest,” Jim says calmly. “There’d be six of us with you two on, other forty goes towards fuel and food, no question.”

 

“Seems reasonable,” Sword says. “Housing?”

 

“We’ve got bunks enough,” Jim says. “Small in comparison to some, but spacious if you squint.”

 

The two exchange looks, and then turn to Twitchy.  ”Run,” Sword says, voice level, and Twitchy does, flat out on a plume of dust towards the smudge on the horizon that counts as civilization on Tylvan. After he’s gone, they pull the bandanas down from their faces.

 

“Chekov,” the one with a gun says, the wide grin splitting his face making him look years younger than anyone Jim’s seen in a long while. “Pavel Andreivich.”

 

“Sulu,” Sword says, shoving the source of his previous moniker back in its sheath. “Hikaru Sulu.”

 

“Welcome aboard the _Enterprise_ ,” Jim says, and he can hear McCoy sighing above him.

 

**{stardate: 2562.271}**

 

Praise God, he can see again.

 

Not well, this complete fuck up of a day isn’t nice enough to give him that, but at least he’s on his feet and can see something other than the pulsing black he’d gotten up close and personal with a few moments ago. What he sees is less encouraging, and he thinks that while he was stumbling all over the ship in sheer desperation, the engine has somehow gotten worse, or at least stopped trying to hide what a complete piece of shit it is.

 

The part is still in his hand, though he thinks his skin has started to close around the metal where it’s digging it. Bones would dismiss that as outright bullshit, but Jim likes to think of that rather than the fact that-- _quick yank, twist, rip, dear sweet Jesus_ \--he’s getting this worked up over dried blood.

 

He mucks in the engine for a few minutes, his movements more of a burst of lethargy followed by a few seconds of frustratingly heavy panting. Finally, though, fucking _finally_ , it’s in, and it fits, and he thinks he’s gotten all the screws in and twisted in the right direction-- _and the fuck does it matter anyway so long as life support kicks in_ \--and he’s doing his undignified best to roll while standing up over to the manual start up.

 

There’s a pause there, as he stares at it, suddenly and inexplicably afraid. All the time he’s been getting here, he’s been confident that he’s got the right piece, can do the right thing, can fix his damn ship and bring his people in from the black, but now? Now he’s done everything except see if he’s correct, and he’s scared, fucking terrified that he’s done it wrong, and that there’s six people that will be dragged down with him.

 

He’s not stupid though, he knows he hasn’t got enough air to fully go through an existential crisis, so he reaches out and throws the goddamn switch and _prays_.

 

It takes three seconds, and it’s the longest three seconds of his life, until engine next to him starts to hum and rumble, and he’s suddenly coughing and choking because he breathed in too fast and fuck there he goes again, onto the floor, except this time it’s because his brain has too much oxygen instead of barely enough.

 

**{stardate: 2560.359}**

 

It’s Christmas on Old Terra, as near as Jim can figure, and he’s had Sulu and Chekov put the _Enterprise_ into a holding pattern over Cathra. The two men, people he’d originally tagged as muscle, had turned out to have an aptitude for piloting his girl that was equal to Spock’s and, once they’d figured out the _Enterprise_ ’s particular oddities, had even outdone him on a few occasions. Spock didn’t mind, as it gave him rotations out of the cockpit to spend with Uhura (even if he would never admit it, the closemouthed bastard), and Jim was just glad they were still flying.

 

The holding pattern they’re in makes all that irrelevant; she’s being directed by autopilot, and the crew is gathered down in the mess. Uhura’s standing next to Spock (who’d finally gotten rid of that goatee about six months ago, thank Christ), and the two of them are doing the very best imitation of cardboard cutouts having a very polite conversation Jim’s ever seen. At some point, he’s going to lock the two of them in one of the storage rooms, just to see how long that stiff politeness lasts.

 

Chekov and Sulu have got a game of chess going on the long dining table, though it’s no chess Jim’s ever played, instead something with at least three tiers and what seems to be mini anti-grav units stuck to the bottom of some of the pieces. McCoy’s next to them, a squat bottle of bourbon and--Jim squints, not quite believing his eyes--a ball of Federation blue yarn sitting on the table, the trailing edge leading up to what looks very suspiciously like a half-finished officer’s overshirt.

 

He walks over, intent on sitting down across from McCoy on Sulu’s side. He spots Scotty in the corner, legs flung over an overstuffed chair he’d dragged onboard on their last jaunt to Hylar, a thick book spread over his elevated knees. They’ve got one more passenger now, an old Vulcan high priest, but he doesn’t seem to be around. When he sits down, both Sulu and Chekov say hello in a distracted sort of way, but McCoy doesn’t react at all, just keeps on bloody _knitting_.

 

“That’s sedition, you know,” Jim says, nabbing a glass from the stack at the end of the table and pouring himself a hefty dose of McCoy’s brandy. “Wearing or possessing Federation colors. Treason, if you’re still a loyalist, to impersonate a Starfleet officer.”

 

“Good thing I don’t give a shit what the Romulans think, isn’t it?” McCoy says, hands still moving as steadily as they were before. It takes a few seconds to notice the omission, but Jim’s not dumb.

 

“ _You?_ ” Jim says, and it’s hard there for a bit not to choke on the brandy he’s just swallowed. “You were in Starfleet?”

 

McCoy snorts, and it’s eerily reminiscent of  Uhura. “No need to sound so shocked, kid.”

 

“But,” Jim starts, searching for words, “you’re a comp--” He shuts up.

McCoy stops knitting long enough to give him a long look that Jim’s all too familiar with. “Don’t be naive, Captain, it doesn’t suit you. Nobody’s born a companion.”

 

“Yeah, but _Starfleet_ ,” Jim says, still sort of flabbergasted (though he notices that neither Sulu or Chekov are surprised, which means they knew, dammit). “Where were you posted?”

 

“USS _Defiant_ , Chief Medical Officer, Laurentian System,” McCoy rattles off, his hands going back to the familiar motions required to loop yarn together in one giant, sweater shaped knot.

 

“Wait,” Jim says, and he’s gotten a little cold. “If you were on the _Defiant_...”

 

“Yes, Captain,” McCoy says. “I know who you were. Who you are. If you didn’t want people to know, you shouldn’t have named this boat _Enterprise_.”

 

“Yeah, well, habit,” Jim replies a bit absently, scratching at his head. “But, Chief Medical Officer. How do you go from a doctor to a companion?”

 

“After the Federation went down,” McCoy says, finally putting the needles down with a sigh, his eyes finally fixing on Jim, “I had nothing left. Job was fucked, and my wife took everything else in the divorce, leaving me with nothing but my bones. Couldn’t get a position on a Romulan ship (not that I wanted one) because of my officer status, so there I was. Me and my bones. Left on Risa after they scuttled the _Defiant_ and made us watch.” He took a sip of the bourbon, swished it a bit and swallowed, not seeming to noticed that Chekov and Sulu, hell even Scotty, Uhura, and Spock had stopped what they were doing in a very obvious way to listen.

 

“As you know, or should if you’ve been paying even the slightest bit of attention, the main Guild House for companions is on Risa. I was a bit old to be starting out, but I had an advantage in the fact that I was already a doctor, and had the medical side of the training already covered. Besides, I _like_ sex, and there’s more to fixing people than just sewing them back up when they’ve decided to bleed all over the floor." Here he gives Jim a look, and Jim just sort of twitches as he goes on, "I went, talked to the Head of the Guild, and she took me on. Three years later, I was licensed and let loose. Two years after that, I happened upon your ship.”

 

McCoy sits back. “The rest, of course, you know.”

 

Jim shakes his head as the others start to refocus on what they’d been doing before. “Damn, Bones, that’s one hell of a change.”

 

“What did you call me?” Bones says, his tone almost a snap.

 

“Why, is there a problem with Bones?” Jim asks. “It’s what you’ve got, who you are. A set of bones intent on saving the fucking world, even when you’ve got nothing else left. Seems fitting.”

 

There’s a flush then, something Jim will never admit to seeing because Bones--man, does that roll off easier than McCoy-- will throttle him if he does.

 

“Shut up, kid,” Bones says, and then the mess settles into a comfortable sort of quiet.

 

**{stardate: 2562.273}**

 

He’s pretty sure he’s not in the engine room. Beyond that, he hasn’t got a fucking clue.

 

There are voices around him, and he’s starting to have flashbacks to the Fall, when he and his crew were blown out of the sky by some Romulan warbid and he woke up upside down in a tree somewhere in Panama. Uhura had only been two towns over, thank Christ, but he’s not anywhere near Panama now, just on a junk ass ship in the middle of the black. His eyes manage to blink themselves open a few minutes later, tearing at the build up that’s started to glue his eyelashes together.

 

When they’re fully open and functional, the first thing he notices is that the ceiling is definitely not the one in the engine room. Jim considers himself an expert on the subject after all the time he spent staring at it and cursing the fact that human bodies, even ones own, were so damn heavy.

 

_So, if not the engine room_ , he thinks, trying to push himself up, _then where..._

 

That’s about as far as he gets before Bones is looming over him and telling him to “sit your injured ass down before I get Scotty in here to make you”, and now he definitely knows how Bones could have been CMO because he’s got the scary bedside manner down to a T. There’s lots of fussing then, and honestly Jim misses most of it because he’s out on a hazy cloud of white-- _thank fuck it’s white don’t think I could take another minute of grey_ \--where it’s blessedly quiet.

 

About an hour--he thinks it’s an hour, he’s not really sure--he’s back, and this time he’s not going anywhere, except maybe the rest room, because although biobeds are good for a lot, they’re not _that_ good. He manages to make it to sitting position without an irate Bones anywhere near him, and he counts that as proof that he’s fully capable of walking the five feet to the bathroom.

 

“If not, I can just drag myself,” he says on a short laugh that sounds forced even to him.

 

Fifteen minutes later, he’s been and gone, no problems. Scotty pops his head in soon after that, and then suddenly they’re all there, ranged in front of him with looks of varying concern on their faces.

 

“Thought I told you to go find help,” he rasps, because, well, he _had_.

 

“You did,” Spock says stiffly, mouth pinched at the corners in a way that Jim knows that he’s about five seconds from bashing someone on the head in a very un-Vulcan display of temper. “Nyota convinced me that it would be better if we returned to assist you after Scotty’s message.”

 

“Nyota?” Jim blinks for about two seconds before he sees Uhura fighting a grin. “ _Nyota?_ ” He repeats, and she breaks out laughing.

 

“I fail to see--” Spock begins, and Jim just waves him off, fighting laughter of his own.

 

“I can’t _believe_ you told him,” he says a minute later, when both he and Uhura--he can’t call her Nyota, it’s been too long--have stopped wheezing.

 

“McCoy knew, too,” she says, grin still firmly in place, and Jim switches his mock glare to a real one as he looks over at Bones.

 

“I told you to go, too,” he says, and this time the gravel in his tone can’t be blamed on disuse.

 

Bones simply raises an eyebrow, his face as impassive as Spock at his best. “And since when are your words the end-all, be-all?”

 

“Besides,” Scotty cuts in, “I had an idea. You know, just in case it didn’t work.”

 

“Had to come back,” Sulu adds. “Forgot my plant.”

 

“You were in the way,” Chekov says. “It was either fly around you, or save you, and well, the Doctor has a soft heart.”

“Not a doctor,” Bones points out, and then ruins it by picking up a hypospray from the tray next to Jim’s bed and starting to make it beep in all sorts of unpleasant ways.

 

“Thank you,” Jim says quietly, not sure if that’s enough.

 

“Our pleasure,” says Selek from his place near the door, and the rest of the crew echo the sentiment in various levels of sincerity.

 

The level of talk increases to a comfortable babble before Bones is waving the hypospray and telling Uhura to get out of his way.

 

“What’s that?” Jim asks, deeply suspicious of anything Bones is going to jab into his neck. He hasn’t forgotten the last time, doesn’t think he ever will.

 

“Just something to make you sleep,” Bones says, eyes a little unfocused. “Nothing serious.” He looks straight at Jim. “Nothing like the last time.”

 

“Good,” Jim says fervently, then adds through a yawn, “but I’m not tired, no matter what it does or doesn’t do to me.”

 

“Don’t be an idiot,” Bones says, voice hardening to echo the CMO tone Jim remembers from earlier.

 

After his neck has been summarily jabbed, Jim starts to let himself drift, but then drags himself up and out of his increasing stupor on a spurt of pure, irrational panic.”You’re gonna be here when I wake up, right? Not some sick joke of God, or the Romulans, or...” He trails off, embarrassed.

 

“We’ll be here,” Bones says softly, and Jim can make out a ripple of nods through the rapidly increasing weight of his eyelids.

 

“That’s good,” he thinks he mutters, before he’s finally asleep.

 

_FIN_

**Author's Note:**

> So this a loose (very loose, deeply loose, blink and you'll miss it loose) AU of Firefly, and specifically 'Out of Gas' (S01E08).
> 
> The Federation has taken the place of the Independence movement, and the Romulan Star Empire the Alliance. Beyond that. the dates are chosen at random, and the characters don't quite align properly (and some are missing), but I don't think they ever could (the crews of the Serenity and the Enterprise are very, very different).
> 
> May be part of a series.


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